I know this.
Because GLaDOS and the TF2 announcer sound exactly the same and don’t have different accents or tones to their voices. :rolleyes:
Not required, no, but there are only 9 people you ever actually see in TF2. Cloning would make sense.
I just finished another play through of HL2, EP1&2 and I have a few ideas, here seems to be as good a place as any to share them. Bear with me, this is going to be a TL/DR text wall.
From the ommited story from the beta and what is obvious in the released game, the Combine are robbing Earth of her natural resources… However, I can’t help but get the feeling that they were in the beginning stages of terraforming Earth… and were looking for something…
Maybe Breen wasn’t really the bad guy after all. His dying words: “You need me.” For what? Despite his corrupt nature and his deals with the Combine leadership via the Advisers, maybe it was these deals that kept the Combine “at bay” and prevented them coming in and really strong arming the planet.
“Adviser” implies advice to one of greater authority. Who exactly do they work for?
As of Ep1 & 2 Combine forces on Earth are stranded. Why? Can’t the Combine Overworld just open up a new portal from their side? Apparently they can’t. It was the Black Mesa incident that got their attention and brought them to Earth in the first place, but they don’t really know where Earth really is in inter-dimensional space-time, they need an active portal HERE to be able to get here. With the Combine network down, Earth is essentially “lost” to them. This explains their great interest in the Borealis, or rather the portal technology therein. This also explains the massive data packet that they sacrificed the Dark Energy reactor to send. It was more than just Dr. Mossman’s transmission, it was all the scientific data that the Overworld needs to determine the dimensional/space-time location of Earth and permanently open a portal. The Borealis is only a short term solution for reinforcements.
I think abandoning the episodic model is a bad idea, strictly from the dynamics of storytelling cadence and the laws of trilogies:
Episode 3 needs to be made in order to finish off the post HL2 trilogy, then HL3 can be made to finish the overall Half Life story… a double trilogy if you will.
I propose that in Episode 3, we learn quite a bit more about the G-Man and the Combine, but it of course opens up even more questions. My thoughts are:
- Alyx staying behind and Barny going with Gordon is a good idea.
- We learn that the Combine were looking for something on Earth. Something they lost long ago, that they have been here before. The Black Mesa incident is the accidental rediscovery of Earth.
- The Combine on Earth activate the Borealis and reinforcements arrive. Perhaps even a Combine leader who is unhappy with the way that the Advisers have been managing Earth. This leader is from a race/has a form that is completely unexpected.
- A cut scene reveals that the Combine were going to find Earth eventually no matter what happened. G-Man and his employers force the discovery early with the Black Mesa incident so that it occurs on their timetable and terms.
- Non trans-Human Combine forces begin to defect and/or surrender to the resistance.
- Gordon fights and defeats the Combine leader, destroying the Borealis in the process. This permanently strands the Combine forces on Earth, leaving them crushed and scattered.
- The G-Man arrives again to place Gordon in stasis once more, this time beyond the reach of the Vortigaunts. The conversation hints that although the work isn’t finished yet, it is nearly complete. There is a revelation that hints at who/what G-Man is and who he is working for. fade to black
Cut to: Half Life 3, the Stunning conclusion to the Half Life Saga.
Opening:
The reverse engineering of Combine technology and subsequent human developments have ushered in the second Golden age of Earth. The remaining factions of the Combine are nearly destroyed, those that remain are for the most part ineffective and exist in an uneasy truce with the humans of Earth. City 17 is rebuilt and renamed Freeman City. It is a shining beacon of hope and the perseverance of the Human spirit. Our old friends are no longer involved in human affairs, they have essentially retired.
This idyllic near-utopia is shattered when a series super portals tear across Earth. The Combine has finally been able to decipher the data leading to the location of Earth in dimensional space-time… and the location of what they were looking for. They have returned in force with massive floating city/fortresses that patrol the skies with impunity, deploying their forces across the globe at will. Ground forces of new combine soldiers, Grunts, Gargantua and controllers sweep through cities, murdering at a near genocidal level. cities not invaded are merely erased with Combine super-weapons. The Combine have returned to take back Earth and it is the twilight of the Human race.
Wake up, Dr. Freeman. Your hour to shine is once again at hand. I apologize for bringing you in at this late stage of the… game… but there really wasn’t anything that could have been done until this point anyway, even by you. My employers have decided that it might be time to… explain certain things to you, but there is no time for that now. It is time for you to get to work. Good luck Dr. Freeman.
Good work RedShirt.
Hm, I’m left with the impresion that the Combine got lucky of finding the portal storm. After the death of the Nihilanth, the employers of the Gman took control over Xen and those portal storms, right? So they let the Combine pass trough them to conquer Earth? Then why is the Gman helping Gordon? Maybe The Employers hadn’t had enough time to take full control over the storm and the Combine invasion was just an accident. Uh, and at the end of Half Life 2, what was going to happen to Gordon, if the Vortiguants didn’t stop the Gman?
So what comes from all this? There are the Combine, Us and the Gman faction, everyone using the other, except us, for achieving some kind of a goal. Maybe in EP3 the Gman will fight the Combine leader 
It could be that, if Gman’s people let the Combine through, it was to stretch out their forces. If Gmain dropped Gordon on the Combine homeworld, he wouldn’t last long. Obviously, the opposite is true if he drops Gordon on Earth, and they no doubt took a big blow resource-wise when they got cut off from Earth.
Advisor doesn’t imply that they work for anyone. The word “advisor” means that people go to them for advice. This just probably means that they tell the lower ranks what to do. A single leader has never even been even hinted at before, so to suddenly have one in Episode 3 would seem pretty random & feel redundant after both the Nihilanth & Breen.
Well, I’m happy to see there’s someone else here who doesn’t think they should skip to HL3 just because they feel entitled.
No, sorry I’m going to have to stop you here. That doesn’t really fit in with anything that’s been established. If they had known about earth before, then they would have attacked before. It would also make the whole packet thing seem somewhat unnecessary if they knew how to get here before with no aid at all. It also seems silly that the Borealis is combine technology. If Aperture discovered advanced alien technology I doubt even their first thoughts would be to stick it on a boat. That’s too random even for Aperture.
The name of the next Half-Life installment is really freaking arbitrary. Why do people keep arguing Episode 3 vs. Half-Life 3?
Yes, why would they bother renaming Episode 3 unless they’ve gone through with some kind of major revision to the game?
Thanks! These are ideas that I have been noodling and piecing together for a while now, ever since getting back into Half Life about two years ago.
There is real-world work in the intricacies of Space-Time and multiple parallel universes that stem from Quantum Theory. Some of it I have read about and while my understanding of it is at the layman’s level at best, here’s my take on it in how it relates to Half Life:
Many imagine parallel universes as soap bubbles, bumping up against each other. While that is a useful metaphor, it is actually far more complicated than that. Soap bubbles bump into each other in two dimensions on the surface of water and in three in clumps. These universe “bubbles” are actually overlapping and bumping up against each other in 4,5 6 or more dimensions.
(For more on this, check out Elegant Universe, by Dr. Brian Green. It is written at the layman’s level. More advanced readers will appreciate it too, equations relevant to topics he discusses are foot noted and in the back. It was also turned into a PBS documentary, you can watch it HERE for free. Word of warning, it is in three parts, each about an hour.)
Once the Resonance Cascade Event occurred at Black Mesa, it broke the shell or membrane of the universe that the Earth exists in. Simultaneously signaling our presence and allowing the Combine to enter our universe. Given the theoretical nature of overlapping parallel universes, the Combine may not have needed to travel through Xen first in order to get here.
Now, this may hold very, interesting implications for the Half Life Universe. Given the quantumly entangled nature of parallel universes and given an alternate timeline with earlier and accelerated development… [color=red]The Combine Overworld may very well be a parallel Earth with Humans as the Overlord Masters of the Combine and the Lord High God-Emperor Freeman is their leader. Sure that is severely troped, but how cool would that be? The final battle, Gordon vs Gordon, crowbar on crowbar…The evil parallel trope is that they wear goatees, but our Gordon already has one. Would evil Gordon then be clean shaven? I do have though, grave mixed feelings about a penultimate ending like that…
I have a couple more thoughts on this. Allow me to address some of your questions with some of my assumptions:
- I read up more on the Combine and Xen while authoring this post. I was reminded that the Borderworld
If you can control access to and through Xen, you can control the Multiverse.
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G-Man provided the Xenium crystal that caused the resonance cascade and then hung around to watch the results, apparently to recruit Gordon to go to Xen. This also tells me that the resonance cascade was intentional on the part of G-Man and his employers. For two reasons, I think. To gain control of Xen and
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The Combine discovery of Earth was likely inevitable. The G-Man and his associates forced the issue prematurely so that the invasion occurred sooner and on their timetable. Thus they might be:
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“Allowing” the Combine the continued use of Xen to access Earth for their own mysterious reasons. Perhaps as part of a broader fight against the Combine. With the opening of each additional battlefront, the Combine weaken themselves in the other areas they already control.
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G-Man isn’t really helping Gordon in the sense that we think of, rather he is “protecting his investment” in him. If Gordon fails, that then shows that G-Man was wrong about him and he would then be held accountable by his mysterious employers for the wasted time and investment.
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What was going to happen to Gordon? Merely stasis most likely, until the G-man and his employers needed him again. There was also the possibility that he was going to get used for the “interesting offers for his services.”
Well, I think in the story idea that I’m putting forward there would be four factions. Combine on Earth (CoE), OverWorld Combine (OWC) Us and the G-Man “Investment Group.” When the OWC show up we are merely in the way. The CoE however are hunted down and destroyed by the OWC for gross negligence and incompetence. In Breen’s PA announcements in Nova Prospekt (6:00) hinted at as much. I also don’t think the G-Man would openly confront any opposition. He hasn’t thus far. It seems he would rather use and manipulate others to further his aims.
A few more thoughts for my story ideas. At the end of HL2, Gordon and Alyx had not yet spent much time together yet. By the middle of HL2/Ep2 though, the Vortagaunts reveal that there is a deep bond between the two, almost Vortal. For my imagined Ep3, she learns of the G-Man and his M.O. When he comes to collect Gordon, their Vortal bond makes her partly immune to the time stop and she pleads with him to not take Gordon away.
“Stand aside my dear, the Doctor is under my employ. He is coming with me. You may rest assured though, that Dr. Freeman will return one day… but not now, not today. Say goodbye Dr. Freeman.”
Cut to: Alyx weeping openly over an empty HEV suit. fade to black
(I’m going to post this now, it turned into a TL-DR text wall again. More thoughts about the opening of HL3 later.)
Half- Life 3: Science harder
The Gman is and has been using the human race (especially Gordon Freeman and Adrian Shephard etc.) to defeat his enemies. This was seen with the events surrounding the Black Mesa incident during Half-Life.
The Gman set up the resonance cascade to bridge a link between Xen and Earth. This then resulted in Gordon freeman killing the Nihalinth and thus defeating the alien forces.
The resulting alliance of the Vortigaunts and Humans may have perhaps been an unforseen implication of the defeat of the Nihalinth who had enslaved them. The Vortigaunts are seen to anger the Gman in parts of Half-Life 2 EP1 and EP2.
This may seem entirely unrelated to a HL2 EP3 Plot speculation thread so I will tell you how it is related. Just like how he used humanity (or certain members of it) to defeat his supposed enemy the Nihalinth from Xen the Gman uses Humanity to defeat the Combine Empire.
My hypothesis is that in Episode Three Gordon Freeman will destroy the Combine Empire perhaps exploiting the Aperture Science technologies on the Borealis. It seems unlikely that Gordon Freeman will have the opportunity to pilot the Helicopter found at the end of Episode 2 because VALVe has not had any usable airborne vehicles at any point of the Half-Life campaigns or even any other VALVe developed games.
I doubt that the Helicopter at the end of EP3 was sabotaged by the advisors who killed Eli Vance but it is a possibility. Alyx would probably not fly the heli because her father just died but maybe Barney Calhoun could, it would be a welcome change to being Alyx’s companion for two games in a row. Or maybe Gordon will find another route to the Borealis that he will probably visit.
All we have now is possibilities and not many certainties, none of us want to wait longer for EP3 but VALVe doesnt want to do a quick shabby job of it so they will take a while. I trust that they won’t stuff it up despite how hard situation at the end of EP2 is to resolve.
Well done if you read all this gibberish, you should be congratulated on your patience. There is certainly so much to say.
Flying a helicopter in Half Life 3 would be weird because even the mods you finds for games like Gmod in which you can fly helicopters just don’t feel right.
That’s probably because they’re not official.
Also because of how nigh-impossible it would be to have a flying section in the game without either invisible walls or blatantly taking control away from the player.
It’s not too difficult, you could just have a boring endless plain of snow in the wrong direction and NPCs nagging at you if you if you make a wrong turn. But I don’t think there will be a flying section simply because I doubt Gordon knows how to pilot a helicopter.
“Dammit Barney, I’m a doctor, not a helo pilot!”
I think, they will try to quickly close the episodic trilogy with a episode three, so they can work on half life 3, or just skip episode 3.
I would also like to see a little more of shepard
The thing is, Kent, if they “skip” Episode 3, the story from it will still be in Half-Life 3. If they skipped over that story, the fans would be pretty angry, Valve knows this and wouldn’t be that dumb.
Allow me to address a few things, often my imagination gets carried away and I don’t quite express my thoughts correctly. The next thing I know I have written a TL-DR text wall. (Again) I may jump around a bit, so bear with me.
Let me absolutely clear, if only a little blunt here: I don’t feel entitled to anything from Valve. Valve will do whatever pleases them, weather it is the HL dev team or the Marketing department. My greatest fear though is that HL-Ep3/HL3 is the new Duke Nukem. I just hope that something is released before it becomes irrelevant.
I was and am speaking as a writer, strictly from the point of view of story telling dynamics. My “vision,” if you can call it that, is to see the conclusion of the Episodic Trilogy using the dynamics of trilogy story telling outlined previously. In it, we see the defeat of the Combine on Earth with the planet’s safety (temporarily) secured.
Then, with Half Life 3, we see a dramatic conclusion of the entire HL story arc. In this “telling,” once it is realized that the Combine may open portals to Earth at will courtesy of the data packet, Gordon will need to travel to the Overworld itself to permanently secure Earth’s safety.
True. Much of my idea expression ends up being free form stream of conscious. While they may be comprehensible, it is also possible that the idea is half formed or only partly/poorly expressed.
I meant to say/add that the “first” visit was also accidental and in ancient or prehistoric times, back when they weren’t as powerful as they are now. They visited briefly and then were forced out, perhaps by the G-Man and his associates, leaving something behind. I surmise that in the canon story line of their arrival, they didn’t realize at first they had been here before. This “thing” over the intervening years could have become the stuff of Combine legend, even of a religious nature.
As far as '“looking for something” goes… The Combine have been occupying Earth for about 20 years now. Why is the Citadel machinery still using the pile drivers to set footers? They have had plenty of time to build the foundation. Tapping the Earth’s core? They have far more advanced forms of energy production, like the Dark Energy reactor for that. This leads me to suspect that they are digging and or drilling, looking for something. The revelation of historical import is in keeping with the tenets of trilogy storytelling.
However, if there is any continued, um, concerns about my thoughts and ideas… just have a look at my signature. I know that some of them may not pan out. I have retconed a LOT of my own original work.
As far as the Borealis is concerned, I never meant to imply that my imaginary artifact the Combine was looking for was on it. With the portal network down and Citadel destroyed, they abandon the search for their artifact. The Borealis is merely the next best thing, their last chance to bring in reinforcements.
I looked up the Wiktionary definition to be sure my understanding of the word was correct… You’re right. An advisor is simply one who offers advice.
I would however anticipate that an organization as large as the Combine to have some form of leadership. Something that occurred to me while writing this. What if the the Shu’ulathoi, the Advisors as we see them, are merely the larval stage of something else, something far uglier and meaner. After metamorphosis, it joins the ranks of the leadership caste/council.
I’m thinking that it was likely to have been damaged by roof debris, especially if in the opening scenes there is a roof collapse.
I agree. If it turns out that they need alternate transportation, my fingers are crossed for a knackered old 4WD pickup. Throw in a roadside scene at a Rebel outpost to outfit the truck with snow chains as the road conditions get worse. While Gordon (and possibly Barny) head off to the frozen wastes, Alyx stays behind to repair the chopper. Later towards the end, she shows up with the repaired chopper to evacuate them from the Borealis as the ice breaks up and their escape route is cut off.
You say that but look at me! I meant to throw in more HL3 ideas buy this has gotten and taken too long again.
I still have a hard time believing that there are people so stupid they think skipping over Episode 3 would be a good idea.
To the best of my knowledge, the Combine are already stranded & isolated with no way of communicating with the Overworld, so attacking it sounds like the dumbest possible thing to do. Quick! into the lion’s den, while we’re still vulnerable!
So they’re in desparate need of their advanced ancient technolgy that they just forgot about? That’s both really cliche & annoyingly stupid.
Kleiner said it was a decade in Episode 1 & I’m pretty sure those are some kind of thumpers, which is why the city is infested with antlions in Episode 1.
So like your Combine “leader” idea this is a complete ass-pull that wasn’t even touched upon at all before being brought up.
I think what you’re really saying is “I want a big baddie to fight like the Nihilanth”. There was an unused Advisor Larvae texture in EP2’s files.
Good lord that sounds like a terrible idea. I know some people are just itching to get rid of Alyx, but a Pickup truck? That’s just random.
I meant only if the Overworld reestablishes contact.
It sounded neeto when I first thought about it, but I am increasingly in agreeance with you as we continue to debate this. Fun? Maybe. Cliche? Very.
:facepalm: Mega-Thumpers makes so much more sense. Was that in the Kliner casts?
I guess I was… but games don’t have to end with a “end boss” anymore.
Out of all of my terrible ideas, sometimes a nugget of brilliance slips through.
Do you really not understand that if the next HL game is not called Episode 3, it doesn’t mean they skipped anything?